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7 June 2020

Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 sources worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.

8.6 |
Sputnik Music (staff)

8.5 |
The Line Of Best Fit

This is classic pop in its basest forms...there's evolution with purpose in every fibre of 1989
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8.571714

8.5 |
The Quietus

Every other song is crammed with merit, from the complexities of her lyrics to the tight production choices which cloak her melodies and are the cause of the album's irrepressible catch
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8.370784

8.3 |
A.V. Club

Swift’s never going to be as bleak as Del Rey or as sexually frank as Madonna, but, on 1989, she’s figured out how to be an adult once and for all
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8.070796

8.0 |
Time Out

Another classy and accomplished album from the smartest pop star of our times
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8.070782

8.0 |
FasterLouder

1989 could have been a disaster – a premix pop album that was indistinct from anything else on radio. Instead, it’s still Swift at the centre, calling the shots, crafting the songs. It’s where she likes to be, and when she’s there, she’s the best
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8.070750

8.0 |
The Observer

A bold, gossipy confection that plays to her strengths – strengths which pretty much define modern pop
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8.070756

8.0 |
The Digital Fix

It's as startling a change of musical direction as any mainstream artist has dared undertake in recent years
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8.0 |
music OMH

8.0 |
The Arts Desk

7.5 |
Consequence Of Sound

The melodies on 1989 rain down fast and heavy against hip-hop beats and bulging ’80s bass lines. These are the tightest turns Swift has ever cut, and they let her slice out her words with real anger, not just passive regret
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7.070844

7.0 |
Spin

With 1989, Taylor really is trying to shake off those haters and players, realizing that she has more fun dancing on her own anyway
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7.0 |
Fact

7.0 |
The Music

Swift has progressed into an oversaturated genre to carve a space all of her own
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7.070766

7.0 |
NME

The country star becomes a pop phenomenon on her flashy fifth album
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7.070783

7.0 |
Slant Magazine

Displays Swift's willingness to venture outside her comfort zone without much of a safety net (aside from some ample Auto-Tune, of course), and test out an array of sonic experiments that feel both retro and of the moment
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6.070707

6.0 |
Evening Standard

It’s starting to feel like this unique talent is playing everyone else’s game
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6.070772

6.0 |
All Music

A cold, somewhat distant celebration of all the transient transparencies of modern pop, undercut by its own desperate desire to be nothing but a sparkling soundtrack to an aspirational lifestyle
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6.070718

6.0 |
The Independent

Love is thrown into stark relief and shuts out the rest of the world, which lends a certain piquancy to the desperately inclusive electropop grooves and corporate rebel clichés
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